Notes taken from lecture - wrote in short hand

·      Plot

·      Character

·      Setting

·      Point of view

·      Style, tone, language

·      Theme

·      Symbolism, allegory and image

Give our character a personality – characterization:

Protagonist – the stories man character

Antagonist – character made to conflict with protagonist

Round character – a complex fully developed character, often prone to change

Flat character – one dimensional character, typically not central to the plot.

Fictional character – strangers to us until they become fully developed. Our impression is based on visual clues – genderm age, hair colour etc

Visual – charactes appearance

Aural – the sound of the characters voice.

Interrogate out character

The more we know about our character the more we are able to know how they would react to certain situations, etc.

Start developing a  Biography – give them a name, and build a relationship with the character. Create a short biography.

Personality outline –

·      temperament,

·      Morals

·      Political stance

·      Hobbies

·      Habits

·      Quirks

·      Likes/ dislikes

·      Short / long term goals

·      Long term dreams

·      Star signs.

Inspiration:

It sometimes helps to look through newspapers, maragines, internet to find pictures and photographs.

Keep that image with you are you work, complete a brief bio beneath.

Sketh some ideas for your character work..

Develop your protagonist points of view as much as possible, this builds a sense of empathy for each piece of information uncovred through the journey of your film.

There must be a obstacle.

Secondary characters should only have one fundamental problem to solve.they don’t need to be as in depth as your protagonist. Minor chracters do not have to have any problems to solve at all. However, this is only a one minute film so we don’t need secondary characters or minor characters.

Seven standard character types:

·      Confidante – someone who the central character confides, revealing the main characters personality, thoughts and intentions – marge Simpson perhaps

·      Dynamic – changed dueing the course of the film, the change in outlook or character in permanent. Sometimes referred to as a developing character.

·      Flat Character –

·      Foil – enhance another character trough contrast – Cinderella’s grance and beauty is opposed to her nasty self centred sisters.

·      Round – well developed character who demonstrais varied and sometimes contradictory traits. Usuall dynamic but different as they demonstrate contradictions. Snape from Harry Potter??

·      Stock – a special kind of flat character, instantly recognizable, businessman or shushing librarian. They are not developed or focused in the story. Mr. Burns.

Summary of standard characters:

Some characters are too opposite and therefore cannot be considered. There fore someone cannot have a character who is flat and round, or a static yet dynamic character.

Make them  special. They don’t have to be eccentric to be engaging but should have qualities and quirks that set them apart and make them memorable.

Behavior – the behavior of a fictional character should be based on your knowledge of human psychology and your work experiences. Every character you create will bea a reflection of some aspect of yourself.

Unique – you cannot make your characters act and be like characters from other films. At the same time characters inspired buy you or the people you know should have their own identities because you and the people you know don’t live in the world of your script.

SCREEN PLAY GARY PERVES –relys completely on movement – no facial movement just body movement.

Contradictions -   once you begine to write and set your character in motion your premise and the psychology you’ve invented for your character will determine their behaniour and actions.

Don’t say it – sometimes what is left unsaid in a conversation becomes the most potent part – screen writers use dialogue subtext or what is under the text to hint at a conflict with out actually identifying it..

Summarise – essential skill in creating rounded believable characters comes principally from the depth of research and background that you give them.

Look at pdf on uce

Go to library get a dvd – take a character with sound turned down and study the moment. Ask yourself why do I understand what is happening?

Idea tutorials

Today we had two tutorials today where we discuss ideas that we have come up with until now. I'm really looking forward listening to and pulling apart all of our ideas to come up with something a little more feasable. It will also be good to get a insight into what other people are thinking of doing as their proposals.

My ideas at the moment are:

• Fear - a young protagonist either a boy or girl becoming scared of a cupboard at the end of the room, or a creaking noise from outside the bedroom door. I want to concentrate on visual language, and using body language and expression to create the story. I do not want any speech, maybe some whining noises, or chattering teeth. I have been inspired by the short animation film 'Sand Man' by Paul Berry et all.

The Sandman

• Memory - portraying how someone feels when they have lost something precious to them. This could be a pet, a family member, an important object. I recently lost my dog and believe i could make something honest. It could start with almost a photo montage of  how the protagonist and the pet first got aquatinted - and then have show the two characters growning up together with certain memories, e.g. dressing up, playing fetch, having a cuddle. This will be the first 15 seconds, it will build an emotional attachment between the audience, the protagonist and the dog.  the last 45 seconds will show how the the protagonist deals with the loss. Inspired by a sequence in the Pixar Animation 'UP'.

Carl and Ellie Scene - UP

• Memory/ A moment in time - my last idea is based on the old folks tale of the Ugly Duckling. I know, and i am sure many other students have struggled to fit in once in our lives, whether it be the colour of your skin, your beliefs, hair colour, mainly the way you look. As you get older you learn to accept yourself and realise that you should not change for anyone. I want my character to feel out of place but then learn to accept himself and become better. My idea is to use caterpillars. I will have two bright, colourful, flamboyant caterpillars that will act as the ugly sisters and then the main protagonist which will be a small plain coloured thin caterpillar.

Brain storying for new project.

We have been given a new project to start off the new semester. We have to come up with some 3 initial ideas based around some key words, fears and phobias, memories, a moment in time, commercial, identity. I have created spider diagrams to help me come up with ideas and particular roots that i could go down. I decided to concentrate on fears and phobias, memories and identity.

Eyewitness to Space: Over 1,500 drawings chronicling the American Space Program

AMAZING SPACE ILLUSTRATIONS

I found this page via doodlers anonymous which is one of my favourite databases to find inspiration, and fresh ideas. I love the techniques used in the sketches, they remind me of tasks we have done in the drawing classes.  If you go to the clip about you can see the whole collection, i have picked out some of my favourite illustrations.

I love the use of bright bold colours. We have not done a task in life drawing where we used colour, we have used chalk and charcoal. Even in my sketch book i haven't included any colour, this is something i should change and experiment with. Colour can really change the mood and feel of an image. For me, the image above looked like the character is in a crisis, everything looks frantic, the character would be in trouble or being attacked. I think it is the use of reds and oranges, as for me those colours represent danger and heat.

I LOVE the three illustrations above, the artist is extremely talented - i cannot find the name of the artist anywhere - as i got the images from somebody else's blog. (link at top of page) - I think its Smithsonian. The drawing style is great, it really caught my eye. Probably because it is so different to the way i draw, i have quite a confident neat line, i do not seem to put a lot of detail of depth or texture into my drawings; where as these illustrations do. Also what i think is fantastic is the use of negative space, some designers believe that a full page makes a brilliant eye catching design (and they could be right) but i also think that minimalism can be just as affective. A designer that can work with the paper he has been given, is someone that inspires me. Clever positioning can be key to make drawing look wrong or right. I remember one of my lecturers telling me, "When you are drawing a character running away from a threat, do not draw them in the middle of the box/paper, draw them to the edge, use the negative space to help piece the story together. The negative space will mean the character is traveling in a direction."  I also enjoy the use of brown and black ink in the lower of the three illustrations, for me it seperated three different aspects of a story on one page.

It is like looking at stills for a film, images for a story board. I love how the drawings just give the viewer so much information. I must look into how to do that myself... And therefore i have borrowed - 'Ideas for the Animated short - finging and building stories' by Karen Sulliban, Gary Schumer and Kate Alexander.

Inspirations...

BRANDON ORTWEIN...

I stumbled across Brendon when i was looking at blogs for inspiration and ideas for our up coming group task for Animation principles. I found these images which are created on post it notes using felt tip pen. Brendon drew his coffee every morning for 100 days and ended up with a huge display. I love how the bright vivid colours represent the coffee which is drunk for that good kick start in the morning. I also love the bold black out lines, i think you need to have these outlines to make the colours hand out, apart from each other. I also enjoy the consistency of the background, using outwards stripes, it creates a unity and it also creates a feel of depth, the lines draw the viewers attention into the coffee cups.

more on brendon's work

New stagger exercise

I hade done a new stagger exercise as i didn't like my butterfly on. For me it didn't work, and I'm not sure this works too well either. I decided to so a character lifting a heavy object - and since i have done it after my character walk cycle i felt quite confident to jump straight into it and get it onto paper.

My new stagger task

Final animation for character walk

Here is the link to my final character walk cycle

FINAL CHARACTER WALK CYCLE